He sank down onto his knees and drew a large circle on the floor, about the size of a well cap. The small jackhammer looked like a hammer drill with a chisel instead of a drill, relatively easy to handle even in confined spaces. He let it hack along his penciled-in line through the thin upper layer of concrete. Breaking into an intermediate space. Air, sand, and even more air in that twenty-two-centimeter thick nothingness. He dug out the sand and shoved it into a trash bin he’d borrowed from the laundry room. The lower layer of equally thin concrete was exposed and the jackhammer chewed and spat its way around the next hole. Done. He was through. He pushed an arm down into the circle, used the flashlight on his phone to illuminate the cold walls below.

Then hurried down into the basement and the shelter to clean up the edges of the hole. It stared down at him like a giant eye—he glued on the Sheetrock, plastered it, painted it, and cleaned the mess off the concrete floor.

Back up to the closet. He didn’t want the hole to be visible from either side.

He cut out the particleboard, fashioned it into a blind bottom for the closet, screwed the piano hinge along its short side, and hid the small doorknob behind the doorframe. The hatch could be lifted up with the knob, then pulled back again without landing wrong. He tried and it worked perfectly, at a right angle to the threshold. The closet now seemed to have a completely normal floor.

Piet Hoffmann paused, momentarily overcome by exhaustion.

A break, it was surely several hours since his last.

Deep, slow breaths with his eyes closed.

Yes.

It would work. If it became necessary.

If they had to escape this place, too.

•   •   •

He picked up a coffee and a cinnamon bun at the gas station near the roundabout on Hammarby Road, took the smaller roads through Björkhagen and Kärrtorp to avoid rush hour, and in Bagarmossen picked up two more cups of coffee at a café that had looked exactly the same for as long as he could remember. He parked in his usual spot and took the elevator to the eighth floor and the studio apartment whose blinds were always drawn.

“Hi, Andy—want a coffee?”

“Sure, thanks.”

“Splash of milk, that’s how you like it?”

“You got a good memory, boss.”

Hoffmann handed him one of the warm cardboard cups. The huge security guard took it in one of his enormous hands, thankful for even a moment’s respite from the eighteen screens he’d had his eyes on.

“Easy like yesterday?”